Artist Info

Eclectic project that dances 'round the edges of techno & pop, groove & lounge.

The roots of Cinérex can be traced to 1994, when at the USA import studios new sounds began to emerge from the Wonka Beats project from Sebastien Kalonji and Kelvin Smits.
Meanwhile, Kelvin started searching for like-minded people in the Belgian underground scene. He found these in Tom Barman (singer of the group dEUS) and in Tomy Rombouts - who had some success with the techno-project Digital Excitation but evolved later to a "post-post modernist soundscaper"). With two ladies, Ivy Smits (previously in bands such as Mind The Gap & Fever) and the American Alissa Kueker (ex-Skylab 2000, Bassland ...) the group Cinérex (after a famous movie building in Antwerp) was founded. On occasion, Kelvin also involved his uncle, George Smits - the now defunct musician from the group of skiffle-animal Ferre Grignard, in the experiments.

The group started recording immediately (from 1995 to 1997), yet their debut release would only appear in the stores in June 1998. This was because insurmountable troubles arose with the "clearance" of a number of samples on which they built their songs. After a series of endless negotiations with the owners, they ended up dropping all the samples."
Sebastien : "If we had paid all the samples we wanted, we would've had to pay to get the record in the stores. With the members of die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung we came up with similar melodies that they recorded for us. This whole detour cost us a few years, but ended up being a an enrichment for our music. It was a change of course under gunpoint, but for the better".
Because the songs of General Electrique that were still lying around fitted quite good within the songs of Cinérex, two of these (Feminax and Blow Tenderly) have finally found their way to CD-land.


"Exit All Areas part 2" (Part 1 was never issued due to these sample-problems) became a record "on which boundaries fade", according to Christophe Verbiest in De Morgen : "<First impressions> sounds a bit like Tricky, <This is for you> floats on a sultry groove, on <Vibe> sluggish beats mingle with free-floating ambient. <My name is ...> stands for jazz meets electronics, <The day I lost my shadow> is quiet folkblues, and <Flight 001> leans towards Esquivel-ish lounge-pop. In short : this is a very varied album, that doesn't leave a crumbled impression."
Jacky Huys of Knack was another fan : "This is a more than pleasant surprise ... a compelling and surprising trip along deformed vocals, jazz-piano, funky bass, drum'n'bass, dance, dEUS (Tom Barman sings "Feminax") and lounge music à la Air. Definitely good."

Live, the group tours as "Cinérex Sound System", a changing group of DJ's. Kelvin : "It's isn't our attention that people come to see us, they have to party. We never have pretended to be a live-band. We have tried that in our techno- and house-past, but there always that one machine that fails on stage and you end up looking like a fool."